The Queen's Job
by purplebowties
Summary: He would have been once again naked in a bed which wasn't his, in house he didn't own, in the arms of a woman who was far stronger than him.


This is the first story I publish here. I'm not English, I'm Italian, so my English might not be perfect. I wrote this fanfiction in Italian moths ago and I did my best to translate it...I hope it's good enough! Anyway, I wrote this back in September, before the beginning of season six, when a spoiler about Bart taking the Empire from Chuck...the spoiler wasn't true, so this is almost an AU. Hope you like it!

**The Queen's Job: **

"Thank you" Chuck whispered, while the eyelids were falling heavily over his eyes and the familiarity of darkness gently wrapped him. Blair's head, laid with grace over the irregular beating of his heart, was a sweet, reassuring weight on his chest. Chuck deeply inspired, letting her perfume inebriate him: it smelled like elegance, seduction and dignity, the unmistakable aroma of Chanel N°5 mixed together with Blair's sweaty skin. He relaxed his shoulders and the arm which was wrapping her thin, sinuous body dangled like a dead weight, as he was avidly breathing that redeeming, brightening fragrance.  
"You don't have to thank me, I assure you that the pleasure was mine" Blair said in a soft, dreamy murmur, clearly intentioned to enjoy the quiet moment given by the remains of the just consumed passion. Even if his eyes were closed, Chuck was sure that Blair was glancing at him with a look full of a fluid, benevolent warmth, her lips still swollen by the ardour and her hair ruffled on the naked breasts. An unaware simile bended the corners of his lips as soon as that figure came to his mind.  
He thought that he would have wanted to raise his eyelids, just to bask himself with that perfect image, but he knew that if he had done it his eyes would have given him back the view of Blair's room and all the sufferance would have been back. He would have been once again naked in a bed which wasn't his, in house he didn't own, in the arms of a woman who was far stronger than him.

He hold his breath and he felt Blair doing the same thing, as if just sensing that hint of tension would have immediately brought her in his sorrow.

Unable to bear the idea of upsetting Blair, Chuck opened his eyes and looked at her silently.  
Blair, splendidly tousled, was studying him with that anxious, worried glance again, the same she had given him when she had entered and found him standing in her room, having his backs to her, with an hand clanged to the opened window's curtains.

_At the beginning the instinct to turn around to look at her while she was discretely slipping towards him –one step at the time- hadn't been strong enough to fight the trembling bitterness with which his eyes were standing fixed on a precise point of the panorama: the Empire's red neon sign had shined fastidiously far, like a blood stain among all the still skyscrapers behind the window. _

_But then her steps had stopped and Chuck had felt Blair's shadow touching him, a dark stain among the chandelier's warm yellow light, magnetic and reassuring, something which had made him feel comfortable, far away from his father's ruthless judgement, from his coldness and his cruelty. _

_So he had whirled, knowing that she was there to medicate his wounds, that she wasn't going anywhere, neither in front of this, in front of the powerless man his father made of him, stripped of his dignity._

_"He took it, Blair. He took the Empire, he took it from me" he had blabbed incoherently and his words had sounded like a kid's ones in his ears, childish and agitated.  
"Chuck…"  
"No".  
With a firmness which had surprised him too, Chuck had kept her from saying anything and Blair had understood. She had understood like she always did, like nobody was able to do with him, she had understood that there would have been a time to talk about everything, but it surely wasn't the moment jet. It was too early, it was still too painful and still too hard.  
She hadn't said a word or given him any full of pity look, but she had only wrapped up his neck with her slim, white harms and let her bended head fall under his chin, with her nose and her lips gently tickling his throat._

She was his. The only thing which has ever been his for real, which has been his all along, from the first time he had found the ardour to slide his fingers under her silk petticoat and Blair had answered to his touch letting him caress her. She was his not because he owned her like a propriety –and Blair had painfully proven it to him more than one time -, but because she herself ardently wanted to be his and this would have kept anybody from take her away from him. She wouldn't have let them.

_The hug had become a tangle of hands and greedy lips. It had been the sweetest and the most immediate comfort Blair could have given him: the awareness that he was the only man able to make her shiver like that , the unconditional trust with which Blair gave in to all of his movements. Feeling that she was so deeply his had made him feel strong, it had made him feel loved and appreciated, important, indeed indispensable, like she was indispensable for him to feel something different from rage and pain. Both of the emotions had exploded inside her and inside her had transformed in gratitude and love, in the instinctive and immediate impression to feel alive and complete only squeezing her thighs, caressing her belly and her breast.  
Then, after Blair had pronounced a passionate "I love you", everything had soothed, changed in the silence's melancholic and peaceful oblivion. _

The illusion of that fragile calmness broke in a sharp, full of reality breath, meeting Blair's deep eyes. She was respectfully waiting for him to say something. Chuck sighed heavily.

_He could still feel the watered-down taste of the Scotch on the rocks that Bart had offered him to welcome him in his mouth. He remembered how even a small thing like his father's ignorance about how he liked his liquor –neat- had made him want to scream, just to leave a sign on the marble face that was staring at him, anything to be considered, to force Bart to look in his eyes and understand his value. But, once again, there hadn't been nothing but detachment and the same old, ill-concealed dissatisfaction in the way Bart had chosen to look at him. It had been with those cold eyes that he had definitely crumbled the promise Chuck had made to himself when he had bought the Empire, hoping that it could honour Bart's memory and feed Chuck's hope to finally not let him down.  
_  
"He says that the Empire needs a less unreliable and inexpert direction" Chuck finally said and the memory of those worlds deeply hit him again, as if he had been forced to relive the scene and listen to Bart's formal and detached tone once again. It felt like he was talking to one of his employees, to someone who wasn't his son – who didn't deserve to be his son. In fact, he wasn't ready to be a Bass, Bart had told him months ago, he had given this reasons for completely proscribe him.  
He wasn't a man and he couldn't measure up with his surname, Bart kept on thinking that he wasn't enough –able enough, strong enough, worthy enough. In the eyes of his father Chuck was like a weak spoiled boy, useless, even annoying.

Blair bit her lip. Chuck knew that she was feeling his suffering as something they had in common. It wasn't only about the invisible wire which connected them –something so strong that led them to share joys and tragedies -but also about what the Empire meant to her and to their story. It was the sign of their greatest mistake, of their great love, but also of how much they had grown up since then.  
"You know this isn't true, Chuck"  
"But he doesn't".  
Blair's glance was pungent and watchful, made incredibly intense by a little of resentment. She looked bitter and ready to speak with great venom, but when she talked, she did it with unique delicacy.  
"It doesn't matter" she said, smiling at him sadly but with decision. "I know who you are, but most importantly you know who you are. He can take everything from you, but he can't take away from you what you think about yourself if you don't let him".  
Chuck sighed and started to braid Blair's curls through his fingers. He would have wanted to tell her that she was right –and she was, he knew that but he still remembered that Bart's words had let him stunned, closed in a contrite and full of discouragement silence.

_The fiery rush of pride which had grown in his chest when Bart had said "From today I'll take care of it" (with a smugly look and a careless tone that were so inappropriate for all that had been sacrified in the name of the Empire) had been nothing in front of his sudden inability to do anything but trying to hide the mortified tears in his burning eyes. He would have wanted to leave giving Bart nothing but a proud look, he would have wanted to show him that, as much as he felt humiliated, he didn't need his approval, that he didn't need Bart to finally see him as a man to feel like one, but there had been something that had kept Chuck rooted to the spot: it was hope. That hope was so vain and flimsy that had made him feel like a fool and a weak, but he hadn't been able to get rid of it. He had seen himself again as the little boy who was ready to wait for a compliment which he knew it wouldn't arrive: it was like a silent but incomplete resignation that created grudge but never missed to bring with it an even more painful hope for a change, the hope to match up with his father's consideration, the hope that one day he would have been able to make Bart love him, to stop being a disappointment. Right now Chuck only wanted Bart to see him as he learned to see himself, to take a step back, a step towards him, to recognize him for his value and not for his failings. _

Rolling and unrolling Blair's curls through his fingers made him feel safe,comforted by the continuous repetition of the movement. She filled his silence slowing caressing his chest without stopping to stare back at him, implicitly inviting him to continue.  
"He called the security, Blair. He would have kicked me out if I hadn't left of my own free will" he confessed and he saw Blair looking down for a moment, affected.

_It had been humiliating and painful, exactly like the last time, when there had been a woman with his same eyes instead of Bart and with the unacceptable courage to disown her son one more time. _

_And Chuck, today as before, had hoped in vain for it to be a mistake, he had left alone, with an exasperated slowness in his steps, harbouring the pain inside. Through the discouragement he had desired to be called back by a penitent look and by some apologizes which hadn't come. _

"Parents should love their children" he declared with banality.  
It was the first thing he thought about, the thought which had been stuck in his mind all summer long – all his life long. It was so unnatural, so wrong: if he had felt able to love a baby who wasn't his, then why did his parents couldn't love him? Why hadn't they felt that rush of unconditional love towards him, that desire to protect him and make him happy?

The courage to ask himself why died on his lips together with his words, made vague by the sincere fear Chuck had of the answer. The conviction that it was his fault, that he really deserved this lack of love and consideration, kept on silently sneaking in his thoughts, latent but strong enough to resist, even if Chuck fought hardly everyday not to give in to it. But fighting was exhausting, it was depressing and maybe even useless because, even if he forced himself to think the best about who he was, his effort was never repaid. Believing that he wasn't to blame for the competent he received from his father didn't change anything, indeed that exertion left him worn out, grown weak by the war he fought against himself and by the one he fought against Bart's convictions.  
Chuck felt the sudden need to be alone, to keep Blair away from that pain, from the inevitable impossibility to not sharing it, to stop her from seeing him so needing, so weak that he was angry to himself for that unforgivable fragility.

He quickly put on his plump shirt, he got up and came back to look beyond the window's opened curtains. Having his back to her, he severely tried to hush up the side of him that craved for being encouraged by reassuring words and delicate touches, the one which was burning for his needing Blair, for her presence and for her capacity to make him feel loved and worthy of love.

However, in spite of the firm will to stay turned, Chuck couldn't stop himself from hoping that she'd put a stop to that contradictory mixture of need and firmness

Blair moved in a silky swish. Chuck felt her as she came near to him, obstinate and determined, indifferent to his mild attempt to keep her away.  
Without her heels she was at least ten centimetres shorted than him, her pale skin and the petite figure made her look incredibly fragile, but it was with a surprising strength that Blair tug at his shirt and forced him to turn around. She had put on the draped sheet and her long hair, which he had ruffled, fell on the pale golden fabric, dirtying it with dark spots. Chuck stared at her speechless for a moment, then he looked down and his eyes stopped on Blair's bare feet before he slowly closed them.  
It was only with the soft touch of Blair's warm fingers tickling his chin that Chuck stopped to fight against the measured pressure with which she was trying to raise up his face.  
When he opened his eyes again he found Blair's dark pupils glancing at him, big and wet, sparkling for the tenacity.  
"It's not your fault if he…" Blair paused, she gently shook her head "…if _they_ can't see what I see when I look at you. It's not your fault if they're so blind, so ignorant that they can't understand how much talent and greatness there is in you".  
"I'm not powerful, Blair" Chuck said it softly. He gave his confession to a shy murmur. Blair shook her head again, this time with more strength, and her curls disorderly moved over her chest and shoulders.  
"I know you think you're not, but you're strong enough to keep them from making you doubt about yourself".  
Chuck sighed. He didn't feel strong enough: he was exhausted, devastated by a war he felt like he was fighting since ever, since he was born and nobody have had the courage to want him and love him. Anyone but her.  
He turned once again to look at New York's lights making contrast with the dark ink of the sky. Blair turned with him and wrapped his neck with her harms, her chin laid on his shoulder, as she was standing on her toes.  
"He had promised that one day this city would have been mine" he said, while the skyscrapers took the shape of his denied future, sharp fragments of the only promise Bart ever made him, the only one Chuck had really believed in.  
"It will be" Blair affirmed with confidence and with a little of unrestrained enthusiasm. "And not because your father decided it, but because this is your destiny and most of this is your will. You're Chuck Bass and the Chuck Bass that I know always gets what he wants".  
Chuck shifted his face and his nostrils ended up in the middle of Blair's curls as he watched pleased a provoking and catty smile appearing on Blair's lips. He laughed, a soft and vaguely bitter laugh.  
"Not always" he commented. "With you I couldn't, you ran away from me" he added, subtle and ironic, but with a trembling note of annoyance in his voice.  
"But I came back" Blair seriously pointed out.  
"But you came back" he repeated, murmuring. He didn't say anything else, he just kissed her ardently and he felt that enthusiasm fortifying him, winding him up with passion, while everything started to look easier and more possible.  
It was a long and deep kiss, at the end of which they ended up face to face, looking in each other's eyes, wrapped up again by a soft and comforting silence. Chuck saw Blair smiling, a sweet and melancholic smile.  
"Are you happy, Blair?'" he asked her in a whisper, quickly, unable to keep himself from thinking that she might be unhappy. "There's nothing simple in my life and I know you wanted…"  
Blair fell him silent, caressing his lips with a finger.  
"Nothing makes me happier than standing by your side, Chuck" she told him with firmness, keeping on smiling. "Through anything, remember?".  
Before he had the time to answer, she continued "At the end" she added pleased "it's a queen's job to protect her king".

**Notes:  
****[1]** I don't really know if you can see the Empire from Blair's room. Give me the poetic license!  
**[2]** The last thing Blair says is her quote, from episode 3X07, _How To Succeed in Bassness_  
**[3]** There are a few parallels with season three, I'm sure you noticed them.


End file.
